Pratt & Wickaboxet
Posted By auntie on December 26, 2017
3.55 miles; West Greenwich, RI
I guess I’m not quite done with 2017 after all. My friend Ann had never hiked Pratt and was itching to see it, so we did a car-spot, putting 1 car at Tillinghast and then starting from Saddle Rock Road. The day’s weather was a high of 24º and there was 2” of snow on the ground. Still, it was good to touch base with Ann and it was a nice, bright, sunny day for a hike.
Better Travelled
The first 3/4 mile of this hike is on the Pratt Conservation Area, part of the West Greenwich Land Trust. The only tracks we saw on the white-blazed trail were those of an ambitious fox. It wasn’t till we got to the intersection with the blue-blazed Wickaboxet Trail that we saw any sign of humans.
Christmas-y
It was a beautiful day for Christmas-y scenery, even though it was officially Boxing Day.
You can find out more about the Pratt Conservation Area from the West Greenwich Land Trust’s website, according to which, there is a “Land of the Cairns.” I’ve hiked this trail at least 4 or 5 times and never noticed them till today. There is something to be said, I guess, for hiking in the middle of winter with no leaves on the trees. You can find out more about the Wickaboxet Trail and the entire Tillinghast Trail system from the Nature Conservancy’s website. There’s a nice map there, but it doesn’t show the intersection of the Pratt and Wickaboxet Trails. Here’s the Auntie map of the entire area: tillinghast-wickaboxet-pratt.pdf. And believe it or not, there is still more to this trail system that hasn’t yet made it onto the map. There’s a trail that goes out to Hazard Road, and another red-blazed loop called the Bates Loop. If you’re looking for mileage, I’d guess you can get up to 12 miles total out of here.
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